Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, February 10, 1995 TAG: 9502100089
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: RON BROWN STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: FINCASTLE LENGTH: Medium
"It's like a nightmare," the 22-year-old Glasgow man told Circuit Judge George E. Honts III. "I'm sorry that it happened. I would repay them in any way I could."
Botetourt County Commonwealth's Attorney Rob Hagan said Lovewine's victims are living with a different image.
"In a sense, the two boys' lives have been poisoned forever," Hagan said. "They didn't see him as a passive victim of society's ills. They saw a cold, calculated, demonic figure."
Honts agreed with Hagan. He tacked 100 years onto a 30-year prison term given Lovewine in Roanoke County in December.
The molestations sent a shiver through the Roanoke Valley last spring as frustrated police investigators started searching for a mystery man who posed as a police officer. Lovewine was arrested after a police informant recognized him from a composite sketch.
One boy, 14, was abducted after Lovewine walked up to him in the parking lot of the Hechinger store at Valley View Mall. He told the boy he was a "Roanoke investigator" and that the boy needed to come with him.
Lovewine accompanied the boy into the store, where the youngster called his mother. Lovewine calmly took the phone and told the mother that he was a police officer.
He later drove the boy to Cloverdale, where he performed oral sex on him in a shopping center parking lot.
Three months later, the second boy was abducted after Lovewine pulled over a car full of teen-agers on Virginia 311. Once again, Lovewine drove the boy to the parking lot of the Cloverdale shopping center, where he started molesting him.
He was interrupted by a Botetourt County deputy, who told Lovewine to move on after Lovewine got out of the car to talk to him. The deputy assumed that Lovewine was with a friend.
Lovewine drove the boy to a secluded spot, where he molested him again.
Lovewine himself was a victim of sexual abuse. He has told his attorney that he was sexually molested at least 40 times as a teen-ager by more than a half-dozen people.
He once was raped by a man posing as a police officer, said Isaac Van Patten, who conducted a court-ordered sexual deviancy evaluation of Lovewine.
Lovewine said he later was sexually molested by a counselor at the Hanover Juvenile Correctional Center, a facility run by the Virginia Department of Youth and Family Services. Van Patten said the counselor subsequently was dismissed for sexual misconduct.
"Mr. Lovewine has suffered wrong himself," Honts said before imposing the sentence.
Van Patten said Lovewine is suffering from a post-traumatic stress disorder that creates sexual impulses that he can't control.
"It was in that state of mind that he concluded that he had to do to these youngsters what had been done to him," Van Patten said. "He said he had a buildup of pressure inside. He said he had to do something to relieve the pressure."
Van Patten said those are impulses that Lovewine may not be able to resist as long as he lacks the coping skills to change. Regardless, Van Patten said, Lovewine likely will need counseling for the rest of his life.
"I don't think there is a cure available for Mr. Lovewine," Van Patten said.
Without those assurances, Hagan argued, Lovewine never should be free. Hagan recommended two life terms plus 30 years in prison.
"These two boys knew that in a good community, a strong community, children look up to police," Hagan said. "He used that strength against these children."
by CNB